


take me to a new land

by butforthegrace



Category: Glee
Genre: Character Turned Into Vampire, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-17
Updated: 2011-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butforthegrace/pseuds/butforthegrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer after their first Nationals, three weeks before school is supposed to start again, Tina gets into the driver’s seat of the car her parents bought her for her birthday, and Mike follows her all the way to California.</p>
            </blockquote>





	take me to a new land

The summer after their first Nationals, three weeks before school is supposed to start again, Tina gets into the driver’s seat of the car her parents bought her for her birthday, and Mike follows her all the way to California.  
 

  
“I want to get out of here,” she says to him the night after school ends.  They’re sitting in the backseat of her car, legs tangled; the radio’s on low, the moon is bright, and the dashboard glows softly.

“Here?” Mike asks, panicking inside; did he do something wrong? He wracks his brain trying to figure it out—he doesn’t  _think_  he’s done anything differently than normal—

“Lima, silly.  Not the car.”  She laughs, and he does too, relieved—until the smile fades from her face and he’s left with a quiet, frowning girl.

Trying to bring her back to him, he leans forward and presses their foreheads together, and she closes her eyes.  “You’ll get out of here, Tina,” he tells her.  “Soon.  We both will.”

He doesn’t know if she believes him, but she kisses him and belief doesn’t matter anymore.  
 

  
“Where do you think you’ll be after next year?”

Mike pauses, his fork halfway to his mouth.  “What?”

“For college.”

“Um.”  He puts the fork down, looks around; Breadstix is nearly empty, probably because it’s a Tuesday night.  But Tina had asked him to meet her here, and he had said yes—how could he ever say no to her? “I don’t know.  Wherever my father wants me to go, I guess.”

She frowns, and he feels like he’s said something wrong.  He feels like that a lot these days, like Tina is falling away from him and there’s nothing he can do to catch her and bring her back.  He doesn’t know why, just that she’s been changing and he doesn’t know why and he can’t put his finger on how.  She’s quieter, more melancholy; she keeps asking about the future and she keeps talking about how bad she wants to get out of Lima.  A map of the States appeared on her wall last week, stabbed by multicolored pins; when he asked her about it she’d just smiled and kissed him and he’d forgotten that there was anything odd about it.

“You don’t have to go straight home, do you?” she asks him, and he shakes his head.  “Good.”

He feels like he should be alarmed by the way she’s smiling.  
 

  
“Mike,” she begins, “do you remember—do you remember in freshman year—well, sophomore for you—“

The car is parked in the woods, in a grove that they’ve been going to for months.  Cars aren’t the most comfortable places to make out, but it’s better than trying to do it at either of their homes, and Mike likes the woods, anyway.  Or, well, Tina likes the woods, and Mike’s learned to like them—the way the moonlight filters through the trees, the stars pricked in the sky above, the quiet of the night.  Conversation comes easier here, although Tina can’t seem to get her words past her lips tonight.

“Remember what?” he prompts.

“When Figgins wouldn’t let me wear my goth clothes, because he thought I was a vampire.”  She’s not looking at him, but rather at her twisting fingers.

Mike laughs.  “Yeah, I remember that.  And then you pretended to actually be a vampire to get him off your case.”

She nods, and—does she look  _afraid?_  “Mike, what if…what if I told you it wasn’t actually pretend?”

  
“ _What?_ ”

He stares at her, and she rushes, “Well, I mean, it was at the  _time_ , but it—it’s not anymore.”

“Tina, what the hell are you talking about?”

She looks at him desperately, grabbing his wrist; he shakes her off.  “Mike, I’m—oh god, I know I must sound completely unhinged, but Mike—I’m a vampire.”

“Why are you doing this, Tina?”

“Doing what?”

“Making shit up, being crazy—why are you saying this? What is wrong with you?”

“I’m just trying to tell you the truth,” she pleads.  “I’m not lying to you—I’m not making this up!”

He shakes his head and starts the car.

“What are you doing?”

“Driving you home.  Maybe if you get some sleep—“

She grabs his shoulder then, and he doesn’t remember her nails having ever been this sharp before, or her grip this strong.

“Please, Mike,” she begs, and he looks at her, at the girl he’s known for two years and loved for one, and he sees in her eyes that (she thinks) she’s telling the truth.

“Fine,” he says, and turns off the ignition.  “Convince me.”  
 

  
He gets used to the idea over the next few weeks.  Sort of.  He spends a lot of time lying awake at night, asking himself why he’s letting her suck him into this crazy vampire shit.

The answer is always that he loves her, but then he asks himself if that’s really enough.

  
   
She says she got to talking with another girl at a bookstore, a girl who saw her perusing the travel guides.

“You want to get out of here, huh?” the girl had asked, and Tina had said yes, and then they’d gone for a walk around the strip mall, talking about California and bright sunshine and places that were a thousand times better than Lima, Ohio.

Behind the bookstore, the girl bit Tina on the neck, and whispered: “Now you can go anywhere you want.”  
 

  
Some of her clothes disappear from their hangers, and a car appears in her driveway, and more pins appear on the map.  Every time Mike is at her house, he feels disoriented; this isn’t the same world he’s from, he’s fallen into some weird place where girlfriends turn into vampires and wishes turn into cars, and he’s not sure whether he wants to stay here or not.

Tina kisses his neck the same way, but he shies every time he feels her teeth.  
 

  
They have sex for the first time on a hot night in July.  Her parents are out of town, and he told his that he was going to visit Matt in Marion.

The moon is bright, and Tina’s window is wide open, and the night is quiet but for the sounds of their breathing.  He knows then that it doesn’t matter if Tina is a vampire, or if she’s making it all up.  He’s hers, body and heart and soul.

He tells her as they’re lying next to each other, her long hair spread out over the pillow: “I’d follow you anywhere.”  
“Is that a promise?” she asks, looking at him with bright eyes.

“Yes,” he says, and it doesn’t matter whether he really meant it as a promise or not.  It’s become one now.  
 

  
“I’m leaving in three days,” she informs him a week later, sitting across from him at a diner, playing with the straw in her strawberry milkshake.

“What?”

“For California.”

“Forever?” He doesn’t want to ask—he’s afraid of the answer—but he does anyway, because he has no idea what she’s playing at right now.

“No.  I’ll come back in time for school.”  There’s a  _probably_  tagged onto the end of her sentence, though, and he gulps down some water, waiting for her to continue.

She doesn’t, so he asks the next logical question: “Your parents are letting you go?”

“If someone goes with me…” She raises her eyebrows, and he nearly chokes on a french fry.

“Me,” he manages.

“Only if you want to.”

He doesn’t think he has a choice, though.  And it’s not like he really wants to say no, anyway—time alone with Tina, with no parents? In  _California?_  That’s—at least three or four days with her, just them and the car and the highway.

“Of course I want to,” he tells her, leaning forward and reaching for her hand.  He’s gotten used to how her skin is always cold, doesn’t even notice it anymore.  “I’ll ask my parents tonight.”

“Do you think they’ll say yes?”

“If they don’t, I’ll come anyway.”

She grins and sucks on her straw.  “Good.”  
 

  
He sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night, carrying his football bag down the stairs with him, trying to move as quietly as possible.  The bag is just filled with clothes and a toothbrush, along with some money, but he swears his parents never sleep—if he even rolls over in bed during the night they think someone’s breaking into the house.

And yet, miraculously, they remain asleep during his breakout.

Tina’s waiting outside in the car; he can barely see her in the darkness, but he knows that she’s there, that the shadow across the street is her black Chevrolet.

As soon as the door shuts behind him, as quiet as he can make it, he runs across the street.  The car door’s already open for him, and he jumps in, swinging his bag into the backseat.

Tina leans across and kisses him, sharp teeth scraping against his lip, and if he’d been feeling any doubt before he sure wouldn’t be now.

“San Francisco is waiting for us,” she whispers as he shuts the door.  
 

  
They’re out of Lima long before dawn.  Mike wishes they weren’t going back.


End file.
